How to Recover Permanently Deleted Emails from Gmail

You can recover deleted emails from your Gmail account. Google provides a facility that may help you in getting your missing email messages back. Learn how to go about it.

Yesterday, a friend of ours came with a question, “I deleted a few emails from my Gmail inbox about a couple of month ago. But now I realize that those emails were important and I am unable to find them in the Trash folder. Is it possible to recover deleted emails from Gmail?”

A similar question was asked by a TechWelkin reader a few months ago. He had deleted emails from Gmail Inbox and then also emptied the Trash folder —thereby deleting all the trash content permanently. A number of people face this scenario. Also sometimes, it appears that, the emails simply go missing as the Gmail user does not intentionally delete them. You may feel at loss as to where your emails have gone. And of course the first thing that comes to your mind is that your Gmail account has been hacked! If you do not follow strict security advice, email accounts may get compromised, but if only some of your emails are missing, there is something you can do recover them. You can recover deleted emails from Gmail.

Recover Deleted Emails from Gmail

It appears that Google keeps trashed emails for some more time even after the Trash is cleared. Therefore, you can contact Google Mail support and request them to help you find missing emails. Google has provided an online form to receive such requests. Follow the steps given below:

You will get a small form to submit. As you have already logged into your Gmail account, the form will automatically recognize that you want to recover deleted emails from that particular account.

Mention the date when you first noticed that your emails have gone missing.

Provide a brief description of the problem and steps to reproduce the problem. Here you just need to briefly explain what happened. For example, you deleted emails from inbox or your deleted the emails from Trash as well or you did not intentionally delete emails but somehow they have disappeared.

Click Submit button

Soon (mostly within half an hour) you will get an email from mail-support@google.com. The email will tell you whether Google was able to recover your emails or not. Please note that you should not reply to this email as it comes from an automated system. A reply will not be read by anyone.

If Google is able to retrieve your emails, you will get an affirmative reply and the said emails will begin to show in your account. Check both the Inbox and Trash folders.

Can You Recover Permanently Deleted Emails?

It is not very clear how Google recovers and returns deleted emails to you. Different people have reported different things. Last month, immediately after submitting the request form, a friend got all the emails that she had deleted in last one year. A similar effort made by another friend bore no fruit and Google sent an unable to recover sort of reply.

We believe that Google can return emails to you if you had not manually emptied the Trash folder. Emails older than 30 days get automatically deleted from the Gmail Trash folder. We think that Google can return these emails to you. But if you have manually emptied the Trash, you may get a negative reply. However, there is no harm in trying by sending a recovery request using the above mentioned form.

Your Experience?

Please let us know your experience with using this deleted emails recovery tool of Google. Your comment will help other readers who are distressed because of losing their important emails.

We hope that this article was useful for you. Please feel free to ask if you have any questions in this regard. We will try our best to help you. Thank you for using TechWelkin!

Lalit Kumar is the Principal Author and Founder of TechWelkin. He is a web explorer and he enjoys finding useful information on the Internet. He loves to put things together to create a bigger solution. Lalit is passionate about technology, languages and literature. You can contact Lalit via email (techwelkin [at] gmail [dot] com) or Facebook (facebook.com/techwelkin).

Comments

About 2 months ago I accidently had some emails I was saving I`m not sure what folder the were in. They were called ” do not call list” If i’m sure there only two or three . I really need them back as we were starting to get some place

Thank you for this article! Almost had a panic attack after accidentally deleting very important emails. Used the form and within 5 min of submitting and re-submitting form (after following instruction of changing password, and going through security flow), all my emails started being recovered including those very important emails! I am so relieved. Now I just need to delete the thousands of emails again that were recovered that I don’t need hahaha But totally worth the effort :D

OMG! Thank you!!! I had permanently deleted my emails and in it was something extremely valuable. I did the 2 step process (change password, resubmit contact form) and within 20 MINUTES I started getting my emails back. THANK GOD! You just don’t know.

Hi, This did work which is so helpful. Thank you! When you get the email back change your password and re fill-in form. I had to do it a few times but this time I literally clicked into my email and all my emails from the last couple of weeks were restored! Thanks for advice!!!

Thank you for this article. I did delete everything off an older laptop that I was passing onto someone else for further use. I did not realize that it would also permanently delete all the Gmails off my phone and new laptop. I was told to just log out of my Gmails on my old laptop and then find out how to ask Google not to remember my password – (I still have to do that). My emails were deleted the day before I read your article so it wasn’t lost for too long. I did exactly as you explained and I did get my emails back. Thank you so much to all involved!

As of November 30, 2017 the initial advice worked almost instantly! My emails had been deleted by a hack, not my haste to clean junk out of my inbox… it is a two step process, first resetting your password, then resubmitting the “help” form. Follow the link above if you can’t find it on Google email help. Many thanks for this post!!!

I had hope, it did not work. ***one HUGE note- after typing a very lengthy email, I got back an intimidate form letter from gmail, asking me to confirm my security settings, and then re submit the form again. Brand new!!! Which meant I had to type the exact same thing all over again!! This time I typed it on notepad and then submitted the form… and about 1 minute later, I got the same form again, asking me to verify my security and then re-submitt the form! I tried once again, and finally gave up.

Sir I have no words to thank you for this article. I am so happy right now and I feel like I would give you a mountain of gifts. I got back a very very very very important email which I deleted permanently by following the steps you have given. I don’t have words to thank you sir. Once again thanks a lot… a lot!

Purnima, your relief, happiness and these kind words are my gift! I hope that the email you recovered solved something of great importance. I am happy that my efforts for writing this article were worthwhile.

You first go to the page “missing emails support page”. Then you have to fill a form there. Fill it and submit. After that you will get an e mail in the e mail id you have given in the form.There you have to change your password.Change your password to a new one. Then again fill up the same form once more by clicking again in the “missing emails support page”. Now you are done.You will get all your deleted emails within seconds!!! Thank you Lalit Sir !

Recently my emails were accidentally deleted from my Gmail account, and I followed few steps to recover the emails. The steps are:

First, need to go to Trash Folder of your Gmail account from where we can retrieve the deleted emails and second step would be to search for the emails there in search box with typing that particular keyword of the email. If the email you are looking is there, then you need to select the email and move the email from the trash to Inbox folder. If you wish to recover multiple emails or folders from the trash, then you need to select the emails and move the emails to the folder you want to save the emails

Thanks for the great helpful article for recovering the deleted mails from trash. I was also worried about the deleted mail and how to get it back. Once I read your article, I applied the steps specified by you. I got mails back in my Gmail inbox.

Lalit you are a genius! Thank you so much, I’ve spent many hours trying to find a solution to my problem – I’d lost over 5000 emails. There were a few forums which suggested a number of difficult ways to retrieve my missing files, but they simply didn’t work. I was just about to give up – then I found your article – and it worked. I contacted Google Support whom responded with a prompt email informing me they could help, within 10 minutes my lost files started streaming in. Such a relief!

I made a ridiculous mistake whilst having a clear out. I deleted all my sent items, not considering that it would delete the entire conversations from each label. I immediately emptied my trash.

Followed the above and wrote a short novel to explain what I had done, instantly had a link to change password. Then I resubmitted, without writing full novel from scratch- I just said I was resubmitting, and then… voila! All my emails back where they should be in an instant.

Didn’t work. Received message back within 10 seconds saying that due to them being permanently deleted they can never be retrieved. Same message as from Kofi. I did deleted them but by accident. Maybe you should update your information.

you are wonderful.. i tried this but unfortunately i could not get my mails and I got a reply Hello,

We received your request to recover deleted emails from your account. Unfortunately, the emails were permanently deleted, so we’re not able to get them back for you.

We know this can be really frustrating, and we’re sorry that we can’t help this time around. To help prevent this from happening again, it’s a good idea to double check the security of your account. We’ve put together some tools and tips in our “Security Checklist” article that you can read through in about 10 minutes to make sure the only one who has access to your Gmail is you.

If you’d like to better understand how deletion works in Gmail, or how long email stays in Trash before it’s deleted (about a month), please read through our “Deleted Messages” article.